Gravity Is Not Suspended

"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." 

Proverbs 22:6

This is true whether you come from a good background with a Christian family or a bad background with a pagan family.  Give some grace and learn someone's story before you write them off.  Christianity isn't a behavior modification program wherein we all the sudden just unlearn decades of abusive, pagan behavior immediately after saying a "sinner's prayer."  Scripture shows that we experience the inherent consequences of sin whether we're saved or not.  Repentance and Salvation spare us the eternal condemnation we justly deserve, but the temporal effects must often be endured for some period commensurate with their details.  Read the story of King David, the 'man after God's own heart', who fell to the temptation of lust, committed adultery, murdered her husband, married her publicly because she was pregnant with his child, and basically lost the moral foundation under everything he had spent decades building.  My pastor once preached a sermon entitled "The Look That Took." and listed at least ten specific things that indulging his lust took from David after an exemplary life up to that point.

Here's that link if you're interested:  http://sermons.faclex.com/2012/05/06/the-look-that-took/

My point today is less about sin after an otherwise good example, and more about new believers who stumble because they don't know how to walk in the newness of life they've entered into.

What I'm reacting to is the tendency we have to question someone's conversion or commitment to Christ because they get caught in stupid stuff after they get saved.  We expect them to act just slightly less spiritually mature and serious than the pastor who is tenth generation Christian from a solid background of patron saints who were all seminary trained theologians who yearly made their pilgrimage to Jerusalem.  Hogwash and fudderbuddle!  Entirely unrealistic.  That thug you're running down and casting dispersions on was forged in an oven of culture and sin that you may barely be able to understand.  That thug was once a child trained to walk in the futile and dark ways of his fathers.  Walking in newness of life will not come automatically nor easily.  Many of them may actually end up dying like the repentant thief on the cross next to Jesus, without ever getting the chance to show any actions that would resemble fruit. 

Sin has inherent consequences not only in the eternal spiritual realm, but also in the temporal - the here and now of every day life.  If you sin without repentance and salvation by faith in the only begotten son of God, Jesus Christ, you will be eternally separated from the presence of God in conscious torment with the devil and his angels cast into the lake of fire - ugly but there it is plainly written for all to read as Scripture records it.  If you sin, acknowledge that you understand what you've done and repent by faith in Jesus, you have changed your eternal destiny to be with Him in paradise for eternity.  That being said, what happens here in everyday life?  Well the simple answer is:  Gravity is not suspended because you get saved.  If you robbed a bank yesterday, got saved today, and show fruits of your repentance tomorrow by taking your cut of the money back to the authorities you will still most likely serve jail time.  Worse, if you confess the identity of your partners and they get jailed with you, you could end up dead in some prison because they shanked you in retaliation.  Inherent consequences brought about by your sin.  Jesus absorbed the cost of your consequences in the spiritual realm and by His blood you will be cleansed from all unrighteousness to stand in the presence of God - but that doesn't mean there isn't hell to pay in the here and now.  God often reduces those blows, unravels the damages and brings others to redemption through the pain that you caused in your relationships with them - but you still have to face up to what has been done, and walk through it until God removes it from you in the here and now of everyday life.  You are no longer your own, you were bought with a price, your new Master guides that process as He sees fit and as you submit.

In sharing my personal testimony over the years I have often likened this process to the analogy of spending X number of years walking down the road to hell.  Just because I got saved I didn't turn around and find myself standing right at the gates of Heaven ready to walk through as a model citizen possessed of all Spiritual knowledge and righteous behavior.  Now Christ's imputed righteousness does just that in the spiritual realm, but we're talking about what happens here in the temporal realm.  I have to walk back through all the same devastation I wreaked by my sinful walk on the way down the road, I may have entered the narrow gate and be walking that path, but it's cluttered and surrounded by my own sinful wreckage.  If others wreaked devastation in your life outside your control, that walk back can be even more convoluted and may take longer than the walk in.  It's different for everyone.  God uses it to prune you into the fruitful vine He alone can see you being.  Our impatience with others is what causes the lack of disciples we are supposed to be making, we want them fixed now with no personal investment or cost to ourselves.  Whatever.  Loving grace isn't cheap, it cost Jesus His life, and if we're going to be authentic it will cost us something as well.

The Apostle Paul is more along the lines of what I'm thinking today.  Paul is an example not everyone truly understands.  They remember the dramatic story of his conversion on the Damascus Road, most remember he was formally named Saul and ruthlessly persecuted the young Church of Christ, some realize that this is the same man who held the robes of those who stoned the first Christian martyr to death.  But many never realize that after his conversion he basically withdrew for almost 3 years to get his head screwed on straight.  Acts 9:26 says the disciples were afraid of him, after hearing his testimony accepted him, but then sent him on his way when he was threatened by a plot to kill him.  Then, in what is surely one of the greatest chuckles recorded in the Bible, Acts 9:31 says after they sent him away "then the churches...had peace..."  Kind of like when your rambunctious child goes to bed after being a terror all day... mom and dad get to enjoy some peace.  Saul, renamed Paul, had to take some time to walk back through what he had formerly done - where his blind, sinful, misconceptions had come from - and what actions his blindness led him to commit - and what deep grace had been given to him to be considered righteous before God.  Paul had to sort back through his extremely blessed studies under the most revered Rabbi of his day, Gamaliel, to put those teachings into proper perspective realizing Jesus was the promised Messiah most of the spiritual celebrities of his day had not recognized.  Paul's salvation and his subsequent 3 years getting his head screwed on straight didn't bring Stephen back to life; or free the prisoners Saul had imprisoned; or keep people from fearing him at first meeting.though.  These were inherent consequences, gravity if you will.  And it was this same Paul who later wrote that the unrighteous would not inherit the Kingdom of God and concluded that list of unrighteous behaviors with:

"And such were some of you.  But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the fruit of the Spirit of God."  1Cor6:11

So the next time you are tempted to discount the story of some thug who claims to be a sinner now saved by Grace - remind yourself "...such was I..." or "...there but for the Grace of God go I."

Churches are not clubs for the perfect. They are clinics for the sick, the wounded and the maimed, where those a bit stronger help those who are still weak. The forgiven forgive. The healed heal. The comforted comfort others. Our role is not to kick people when they are down. They are the devil’s victims and, rather than scorn we should pour on them the oil of understanding and bring recovery and joy.    

Reinhard Bonnke